Now and again as they fed, the whole flock would rise momentarily into air and float up as though blown from the earth by some invisible breath, and then, as silently and simultaneously, sink to earth again. {67} At times one noticed how, rising up, they seemed to move in exactly one position, moving their yellow rosy-stained beaks and grey heads from right to left as though they feared an enemy. Yet they had no need to fear, for it was quite clear that the rooks had been specially engaged by them to be their sentinels. There they sat each in solitary sable-hood, on the trees all round the lawn,--policemen on guard, and of such good manners, that until the visitors from the sea had eaten and were full, they did not think of claiming their share of the broken victual. What astonished one most as these black-headed gulls came morning after morning to the sound of the gong, was their apparent determination to lose no time about their food. They sat down to table and rose up as one bird, but they were not more than ten minutes about their meal, and there was some reason for this. There were other breakfast tables spread for them on other lawns; the gong at Derwent Hill was after all but summons to a first course. How mild, how gentle, with what dove-like tenderness did these grey-headed people of the sea appear as with merry laughter they sailed about my head, their feet tucked {68} up like coral pink jewels against their breast; how unlike those fierce black-headed guardians of their nests and young, who had dashed at one, with open beak and scolding voice and angry wing, upon the spring-tide dunes of Ravenglass. {69} AT THE GRASMERE PLAY. What a wonderful people these Westmoreland folk are; we see them on the Wrestling Ground at Pavement end, and we think we never saw such 'playing.' We enter a Westmoreland dale farm, and we feel, if ever men and women were born to make two ends meet by the care of sheep or cattle, these are the people. We take lodgings in a Westmoreland village for a holiday season, and though it may be quite true that the landlady doesn't rave about the scenery, and is rather of the type of the good woman-body who had lived at Rydal Mount before she became lodging-house keeper, and who said to my friend, 'Yes, yes, I am a tidy good cook and a decentish housekeeper, but I don't know nowt about sunsets or sic like, and I don't need, they've never been in my line,' it is at the same time true that, for looking after one's creature wants and entering into the doings {70} of every day and making one feel part and parcel of the household, a Westmorland housekeeper is bad to beat.